Energy Day: Watt Went Down
LOD's Senior Client Solutions Manager, Tom Allander, shares his takeaways from Crafty Counsel's Energy Day.
The energy sector is charging ahead and in-house legal teams are under pressure to stay switched on—whether it’s navigating regulatory currents, powering through sustainability targets, or getting ahead of the latest tech buzz. Crafty Counsel have clearly spotted this too, adding Energy Day to their ever-growing list of curated events for the in-house community.
I was lucky enough to attend their inaugural event. It was a brilliant opportunity to spark conversations, share ideas, and generate solutions to some of the industry’s biggest challenges. For myself and the rest of the LOD team, it was electrifying to connect with in-house teams and see how businesses are staying plugged into this fast-moving sector.
OK, I've run out of energy-related puns… but here are my key highlights from the day:
Unconference
The first session of the day – labelled “unconference” – was designed to get people talking and sharing their biggest challenges as in-house energy lawyers. And it worked. It was a great way to break the ice and get a pulse check from the room.
The 5 most common challenges raised were:
- Capacity, never having enough time and spinning too many plates (more on this topic in our latest global survey)
- Struggling with resourcing and finding unicorn lawyers with the right specialist expertise
- Keeping up with the pace of regulatory change and translating this for the business
- Demonstrating value and managing perceptions of the role of legal
- The power imbalance when navigating deals as a small business transacting with energy giants and other large organisations
The Crafty Counsel team commented that resourcing challenges were raised more prominently than at their other sector events, which echoes LOD’s current experience of the energy sector. The right energy experience can be like gold dust and in recent years we’ve seen a steady increase in demand for skills in this more specialised area.
The strategic focus
There was a big focus on the role of legal as a strategic business partner throughout the day. Whilst not a new concept – or unique to the energy sector - it was evident from the conversations in the room that a combination of lean teams and a heavily regulated industry requires legal leaders in energy organisations to be strategic operators. In this role, they are bringing the legal team to the table to guide decisions from the outset - whether launching a new product or handling a crisis.
We didn’t talk about AI… much
Surprisingly, in a world where conference agendas are dominated by AI and the change it is driving in the industry, there was very little mention of it during the day’s sessions. And it was quite refreshing to focus on other themes. Although that didn’t stop it being talked about during the coffee breaks.
General consensus from the attendees was that, right now, energy work, particularly in the renewables space, is incredibly specialist and changing all the time, so there is less opportunity for AI to have a solid impact yet. But that isn’t to say that AI isn’t already utilised in more standard practice areas within energy, such as commercial contracting, but in a room of energy-focussed lawyers, it was clear that AI can’t keep up with them!
Ending with a pub quiz
After a day of strategic conversations and technical breakouts , an energy themed pub quiz was the perfect way to wrap things up.
I can’t recall much of the content, which may explain why my team finished rock bottom. But I particularly enjoyed the way the Crafty Counsel team had woven in questions they’d asked primary school children about energy. Their most memorable insight was to label “encouragement and sleep… and also food” as the place where we get energy from. With such complexity dominating the daily work of in-house energy lawyers, it was novel to guess the children’s answers and apply some simple, straightforward thinking to the energy sector.
So, all in all it was a day packed with powerful discussions, high-voltage insights, and plenty of ingenious sparks flying between Crafty's in-house community —proving once again that when it comes to the energy sector, staying current is everything (puns now fully depleted!).